Ah, the days before counselling services and compensation culture....."We mythologise World War II perhaps more than any other conflict in our history.The Dambusters... the 'armada of little ships' at Dunkirk... the Desert Rats... young Spitfire pilots waiting for the scramble with their deckchairs and wind-up gramophones... all are bedded deep in the consciousness not only of people who took part but also the generations whose freedom they ensured.Just as much do we mythologise those on what was called the Home Front; the civilians who endured six terrible years, from 1939 to 1945, with such extraordinary resilience and were an integral part of what Winston Churchill rightly termed this nation's 'finest hour'. Recent times have given us a flavour of that grainy monochrome Britain, 70 and more years ago. For in 2012, we, too, cannot completely escape the fear of bombs and sudden death, we have to submit to draconian regulations in the name of security and stay paranoiacally on our guard against an 'enemy within'.We, too, have had to watch our young soldiers shipped home from faraway battlefields, dead or horribly maimed. We, too, are constantly badgered by government to tighten our belts and remember 'we're all in this together'; indeed, we have been only narrowly spared from having to carry World War II-style identity cards.And in our growing economic Blitz, in the absence of a Churchill, what was the message that carried most reassurance? It was a Ministry of Information slogan, issued on the war's outbreak in 1939, but with centuries of stiff upper lips behind it: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON."When Britain really DID keep calm and carry on: Fed up with the way people whinge at every little set-back? A cache of lost propaganda films magically evokes a very different era | Mail Online